By Vivek Juneja
 

The Advent of New Normal and Accelerated Digital-Transformation

Over the past year, since Covid-19 started impacting the economy, we have seen accelerated digital-transformation by companies in processes and business operations, particularly with growing adoption of emerging technologies, like, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and robotics, among others. Such systemic change has been necessitated to ensure business continuity to induce efficiency, control costs and develop sustainable business models.

Like other sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare and food-processing; digitisation and automation is gaining ground in the Logistics & Warehousing management vertical as well. Traditionally, the warehouse industry has been relying on multiple manual and paper-based tasks to complete basic activities such as picking, put-away and sortation. This not only increases the chance of error, but also has a detrimental effect on productivity. The decision-making factor in such scenarios has been the ROI of automation vis-à-vis the cost of manual labour. However, due to the pandemic, the discussion has evolved from just ROI to safety of people, workforce availability and ecommerce needs.

Before we dwell in to the operational aspects of automation in warehousing, let’s briefly touch upon the necessary elements that would constitute an automated system in the segment.